Wouldn't it be good if parents could track who their children are emailing.

That's the promise behind Kid-e-mail which launches as a free service this November. It says it can offer parents a huge swatch of information on who their children are communicating with.

On its website Kid-e-mail says it can gather some or all of the following information: email address, IP address, date and time of opening, how long the email was open for, the browser used, the language used, client software and ISP etc.

Also "in all but the most extreme cases the unique address of the recipient's machine" will also be provided.

A neat trick, especially when you consider anyone using a dial-up connection almost certainly won't have a unique IP address. Kid-e-mail also says this information is gathered "regardless of the settings on a person's machine".